In Shaun White Skateboarding, you restore joy and freethinking to an oppressed and conformist world. One of the game's great ironies is that you do so by uncovering Stride Gum billboards in a city abounding with Wendy's fast-food restaurants.

The first half provides plenty of enjoyable skating; It's fun at first to watch the city come to life; A couple of great environments to skate in

The second half is mired in boring; tedious puzzle tasks; Hacking is flat-out dumb; Story and visuals never capitalize on the premise

There are two dominant skating games on the market at the moment, Tony Hawke and Skate which have been the heavy hitters for several years now. Sure, they've had their ups and downs but in the grand scheme of things, they are as close to skating as we mere mortals will get.

On paper, Shaun White Skateboarding seemed assured to fill the gap left by old-school Tony Hawk Pro Skater, but a lack of invention outside its transformation and shaping mechanic lets the side down.

Don't bother. There's really nothing enjoyable about this game, even the multiplayer which has promise you can't even enjoy because there is no one online to play with.

Shaun White Skateboarding pushes a novel world-shifting mechanic with some interesting branches, but it all grows stale in the company of questionable gameplay. The design is fundamentally lacking incentive and balance, as it's far too quick to punish players for every little mistake during...

Skateboarding is easily one of the most oversaturated genres in video games. So, if someone is planning on making a brand new franchise, they'd better do their best to make it stand out from the crowd. Shaun White Skateboarding's stab at breaking away from the norm is certainly daring.

As boring and dull as the world it's set in, Shaun White Skateboarding fails to impress. Its gameplay is unoriginal but relatively deep; however, it's hidden beneath an overly aggressive focus on a dumb story.

Shaun White has decided to drop his snowboard and pick up a skateboard, throwing his name into the fray and competing with genre stalwarts Tony Hawk and Skate . To its credit, Shaun White Skateboarding does offer a completely new way of interacting with your environment through skating, but this...

Most people don't realize that Shaun White is just as accomplished a skateboarder as a snowboarder. Sure, he's mostly a vert skater, but the man has won more competitions than full time skaters care to admit.

Shaun White Skateboarding shows a fair deal of promise when you start the game. There's an intriguing introduction to the dystopian world of New Harmony wherein players will soon be guiding their character through a moral uprising.